Today in APIs: Yelp Aqcuires its European Rival, Social Commerce Expands to Instagram and 14 New APIs

Yelp takes a big step forward by acquiring Qype. Chirpify expands its social commerce platform to include Instagram. Plus: Zuckerberg and Facebook have thought about charging for its APIs, but advertising is better, Rackspace Cloud Block Storage is now in unlimited availability and 14 new APIs.

Yelp Aqcuires its European Rival

Apparently $50 million can still buy you something these days. Yelp’s pockets may be millions lighter but the weight of the company’s presence in Europe is definitely greater. Yelp announced today that it has acquired Qype, the company’s biggest rival in Europe, for $50 million. Yelp had this to say about what Qype brings to the table:

“Qype’s contributors have written more than two million reviews of local businesses, resulting in more than 15 million monthly unique visitors to the service.”

This move appears to be an important step for yelp in an ongoing battle with Google. This is not the first time that one of these two companies has bolstered its offering by way of acquisition. It was just over a year ago that Google purchased Zagat.

Social Commerce Expands to Instagram

Chirpify, a Portland-based startup, “enables businesses and consumers to buy, sell, donate and pay in-stream on social media.” The company announced that it will expand its platform to include Instagram.

Chris Teso, Chirpify CEO, makes the very succinct point that:

“If people can’t buy it in-stream it’s not social commerce. It’s advertising. We turn attention rerouting advertising into high value in-stream transactions. We’re the only company truly doing social commerce.”

14 New APIs

Today we had 14 new APIs added to our API directory including a caption and transcription service, a social media topic organizer, a face detection and recognition service, a turkish mutual fund information service, a turkish listing of prohibited investors, a lean and agile project management software, a photo sharing service, a currency and economy creation service and a uk mapping service. Below is more details on each of these new APIs.

3PlayMedia API: 3PlayMedia is a captioning and transcription service that uses time-synchronized word for word transcription that makes captions and subtitles linked to the media as well as making the media text-searchable. The 3PlayMedia API has 3 branches of use: The file management portion which allows users to access accounts and upload new files, the transcript portion that facilitates access to transcription services, and the caption portion that allows captions to be retrieved in multiple formats.

Actwitty API: Actwitty integrates data from social networks and organizes it into topics. Actwitty allows for an organized profile by topics that can be shared with other users.

The Actwitty API allows developers to access and integrate the functionality of Actwitty with other applications and to create new applications. Public documentation is not available; interested developers should sign up here for an API key: https://www.actwitty.com/api.

BiometryCloud API: BiometryCloud is a face and image recognition service for web and mobile applications. BiometryCloud allows people to be recognized in images.

The BiometryCloud API allows developers to access and integrate the functionality of BiometryCloud with other applications and to create new applications. Public documentation is not available; interested developers should sign up here for access: http://biometrycloud.com/en/api.html.

CMB Mutual Funds Portfolio Values API: The Capital Markets Board of Turkey (CMB) is the regulatory and supervisory authority in charge of the securities markets in Turkey. The Mutual Funds Portfolio Values API provides basic mutual funds information, including funding amounts, number of shares, number of investors, asset values, asset allocation, and unit price data. Information is provided for all mutual funds portfolios in Turkish markets.

The CMB website is provided in both English and Turkish, but the API documentation is only given in Turkish.

CMB Prohibited Investors Service API: The Capital Markets Board of Turkey (CMB) is the regulatory and supervisory authority in charge of the securities markets in Turkey. The Prohibited Investors Service API enables users to retrieve information about investors and companies who are prohibited to perform any operation in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) or any other organized securities market in Turkey.

The CMB website is provided in both English and Turkish, but the API documentation is only given in Turkish.

Digite API: Digite is a provider of enterprise software that encourages collaboration during Agile Application Lifecycle Management. Their software includes a range of products including applications for project management, requirements management, process governance, portfolio management, Kanban and more. Their API allows developers to integrate the application and it's functionality into exsiting systems.

FotoZap API: FotoZap is a photo sharing app for brand ambassadors. The app lets uses capture photos and videos of a customer's experience, then scan a Giveaway Card and hand it to the customer. Customers can go online to the custom microsite to view and share their story across social networks. The FotoZap API lets developers integrate the service into third party marketing applications. The API uses RESTful calls and responses are formatted in XML.

PicoMoney API: PicoMoney is a currency and economy creation service that allows users to build exchange based systems into games and other web services. The PicoMoney API enables users to create apps that include the currency service. The API uses open standards such as the OpenTransact family of protocols, Oauth 2.0 for authentication, and WebFinger.

Service-X API: Service-X Web Service Solutions is a web service provider from the UK that hosts an assortment of APIs. Most of these APIs provide mapping-related functions such as creating maps, identifying routes, and locating mobile devices or nearby schools. Users may also retrieve an address based on a postcode or partial details, or retrieve local information for a given place within the UK. An SMS service enables users to send and receive texts from any mobile number.

SI-TSA Timestamp API: The SI-TSA (Slovenian Time Stamping Authority), an issuing authority for time stamps, is part of the infrastructure of the Certification Authority at the Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration. The SI-TSA issues trusted time stamps intended for use by public administration institutions. In the future, they will also be available to businesses and other end users.

The SI-TSA Timestamp API can be accessed using SOAP calls issued in XML format. The SI-TSA website and the API documentation are provided in both Slovenian and English.

SimpleGeek BlogXBrowsing API: Chris Anderson, author of the blog "simplegeek", provides the BlogXBrowsing API as a method for searching his blog. API users can retrieve the dates of entries, entries for a given date, entry categories, entries by category, and RSS subscription methods for the blog. These functions are accessible using SOAP calls issued in XML format.

SMS.MIO SendMessages API: SMS.MIO is an organized system that allows its users to communicate with each other via SMS, e-mail, fax, letter, and recommended A/R (letter registered with acknowledgement of receipt) either individually or in groups. Messages may be sent both manually and automatically. SMS.MIO allows any municipality, agency, association, or company to communicate with their customers, partners, employees, or members quickly and efficiently.

All of SMS.MIO's functions are available via SOAP API. The SMS.MIO website is provided solely in Italian.

The SpringSense Meaning Detection API allows developers to access and integrate the functionality of SpringSense with other applications. Some example API methods include returning meaning of text, submitting sentences for meaning detection, and submitting text for disambiguation.

Syndicate Plus API: Syndicate Plus is a market leader in providing consumer product data. The API offers third parties the ability to search products and gain access to detailed information about any given consumer product, including brand and manufacturer information, product images and nutritional values.

Along with core product data, Syndicate Plus is a market leader in providing information about new products on the market, product discounts and special offers and consumer reviews. In future releases the API will enable third-party developers to further tap into this wealth of consumer product goods data.